


Bitter

by SolidoNaso



Category: Vento Aureo - Fandom, ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, au where giorno and diavolo have a slightly different conversation before diavolo dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-04 23:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16799215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolidoNaso/pseuds/SolidoNaso
Summary: "His past had haunted him, tried its best to kill him  - and he had killed it in return. Wasn't that enough? Why wasn't it enough? At the top of Passione, at the top of Italy, at the top of the world, why couldn't Diavolo say that he had ever been happy?"some personal takes on diavolo's character. also my first official fanfic! 🎉 constructive criticism/comments welcome!





	Bitter

Diavolo felt wrong. Every breath he ever took was laced with some vague, nebulous sense of 'wrongness’ that he jealously guarded away from even his own mind. His past had haunted him, tried its best to kill him - and he had killed it in return. Wasn't that enough? _Why wasn't it enough?_ At the top of Passione, at the top of Italy, at the top of the world, why couldn't Diavolo say that he had ever been happy? If _this_ was his everlasting apex, then he had been right to think that heaven itself had nothing to offer him.

And here he was now, dragged out of his perfect anonymity and faced with his worst fear: somebody far, far greater than him. Fate had abandoned Diavolo. He couldn’t accept it. The glare of defiant black eyes clashed with a gaze of calm blue. Giorno Giovanna - the usurper to his throne.

The Colosseum, long after the fall of Rome, had become the stage for a gladiator fight of the Devil's own making. Diavolo was covered in his own blood. The battle was almost over, and it wasn’t in his favor. His legs crumpled below him, unusable, and there was nowhere else for him to run. King Crimson could do nothing to save him anymore. The only reason he was still alive was because Giorno hadn’t deemed him worthy of a quick death. Feral, desperate, blind with rage, and awaiting his final judgment, the Devil shrieked his mantra.

“I _alone_ control my fate!”

“But you don't control your fear.” Giorno's response was immediate. Too immediate. That cold, calculating gaze and three decades of accumulated rot pierced Diavolo’s body, dragging his mangled soul out into the light, oxidizing it, torturing it, _exposing_ it. Everything that Diavolo had ever wanted to hide, Giorno Giovanna knew in an instant.

A deadly silence hung heavily between them.

“...You're wrong,” Diavolo snarled. “I _am_ my fear.”

Fractured black eyes wild with equally fractured emotion. His black-painted nails gouged the skin of his palm, becoming warm with blood. Giorno Giovanna was everything Diavolo could never be, and he fucking hated it. When Giorno was burnt to the ground, he arose like a phoenix - Diavolo only twisted and awoke as a demon. He had been given nothing in life, nothing but a façade and broken memories and the smell of flesh, panic attacks and lust for death and gritting his own teeth until they splintered in his mouth - he spent his entire life erasing it all, shattering his mirrors, animalistic, violent, sick. Why didn't Giorno turn out like him? What inner light did Giorno have that let that abused, battered child become a life-giver, a savior? What was it that Diavolo lacked? What was he missing?

Diavolo felt fear. He didn't go a single day without feeling fear. But this sensation, creeping up his spine and tightening his throat - this wasn't fear. This was terror. This was the very feeling, ice-cold and strangling, that he had burnt to ashes alongside Sardinia. This was a feeling he recognized, the one that had dyed his childhood crimson and deeply stained every memory he wished he could forget.

Giorno stepped closer to his hunched, broken figure. Like a dying animal, Diavolo stared up at his to-be killer. In Giorno Giovanna's eyes, he saw the worst version of himself reflected back at him - the scared, miserable boy in Sardinia who prayed for mercy on bruised knees until they stained the floor scarlet.

In that moment, mere seconds before the raving Devil was condemned to hell, he realized that he could never truly erase his past.


End file.
